In conventional drinks dispensers, the drinks are reconstituted from a liquid concentrate or powder contained in reservoirs. The liquid concentrate or the powder is metered then mixed with a diluent, generally hot or cold water, inside the dispenser, passing through pipes, pumps and mixing bowls. Mixing is generally performed by a mechanical stirrer contained within a chamber. The conventional preparation of these drinks therefore requires a great deal of maintenance and cleaning in order to keep those parts that are in contact with the food product constantly clean and avoid the risks of contamination and bacterial growth. The machines also represent a significant investment on the part of the operators.
Some of these problems have been solved with systems for delivering drinks from a disposable or recyclable package containing a liquid concentrate. General solution consists in incorporating the food liquid pump into the package and controlling the activation of this pump by the machine by connecting the package to the machine and, more particularly, by connecting the pump to the machine. The operator needs merely to remove the package once it is empty and replace it with a new one in order to proceed with dispensing another drink. Any cleaning is then no longer required. Such a solution is described in EP-A 1-1 768 925.
This solution of a disposable storing, metering and delivering package has never been applied for the systems delivering drinks from a disposable or recyclable package containing soluble powder. It is effectively known that powders are very sensitive to humidity and air atmosphere and it was obvious that the principle developed for the liquid concentrates could not be applied for the powders without problems. The main problem is that the dosing system for metering the powder would block further to the partial dissolution of powder in the delivery part of the system in contact with atmosphere. That would lead to false powder dosing and then to the complete blocking of the system.
Yet such a type of disposable or recyclable package that enables minimal cleaning, easy and quick re-loading would present big advantages for the delivery of powders. It would in particular presents an advantage that is specific to powder: it would eliminate the refilling step consisting in opening a storage container and transferring its content in the system reservoir by direct pouring, said step conducting in an aeration of the powder and a degradation of its quality.
There is therefore a need for a disposable storing, metering and delivering package containing powder that provides solutions to all the aforesaid problems.